to whomever it may concern...2012 was the year of the skip and the year of the builder's van as far as Waldegrave Road was concerned.... Sometimes there were as many as 4 skips and upto a dozen vans within spitting distance of AbiRhodesCastle - creating tremendous parking problems during the day and difficulty in the late evening too - we sometimes had to park 2 streets away!I'd hoped it had come to an end - but this morning a humongous skip was delivered just across the road from my next door neighbour. Luckily just 1 van at present but I fear worse is to come - the people who live in the house where the skip is probably think they have a dog-given right to park their n vehicles nearby too Big building projects nowadays tend to put up large notices telling us about Considerate Construction and do not leave skips and piles of building materials on the public highway and the pavement - when they do they are required to make arrangements for pedestrians etcSmall builders seem to have no such consideration for the inconvenience and problems they create and cause in their wake

So please....If you are a small builder or sub-contractor please have a little... no - a lot more consideration for the neighbours of the folk you are working for - don't use a huge skip which occupies 3 parking spaces when a series of small ones will do the job equally well, and be aware that if your guys turn up in half a dozen vans which stand by doing nothing other than being in the way of others - why can't they all come to your depot or yard and be transported back and forth to the site they're working at. If you haven't got a yard or depot - then get one - OK, it might increase your overheads but at least you'll get a bit more respect from the people you're causing frustration to.I know at least 3 firms I'd never invite to quote for a job - just because they've caused so much havoc and mayhem when they've been working locally in the past

The Pub With No BeerThere’s a wonderful little venue on the Kemp Town/Brighton border where I’ve seen several excellent gigs both musical and theatric. It’s called ‘Upstairs at Three and Ten’. Sadly the same positivity cannot be directed to the downstairs pub ‘Three and Ten.’ On the last couple of occasions I’ve attended a gig at the former, the latter has been sadly lacking in one or more of the basic things you expect from such an establishment.These expectations are beer on tap, Guinness, polite and/or friendly staff, a choice of drinks at reasonable prices, help and empathy when for whatever reason they can’t supply what you first ask for and a hearty atmosphere. Given the correct supply of the majority of factors on this list, the final one follows by dint of there being a happy and content clientele as a result.The Three in Ten has failed me miserably – on this occasion more miserably than I would have thought possible. I’ll just give you a bullet-pointed list as to linger putting it all into wordy prose would be just too, too painful….• There were no draught beers due to the lack of delivery: this may well have been owing to the fact that the narrow lane was cut off by unavoidable roadworks [I’m extrapolating here, in order to give the pub the benefit of any doubt] – this might be understandable and easily tolerated if some effort had been made to fill at least some of the gaps – but for instance there had been no evident progress in providing, say, bottled Guinness as an alternative to the draught variety [I’m not getting involved in arguments about whether such a substitution might or might not have been acceptable] – there was no apparent shortage of bottled beer, by the way, other….• than the fact that the choice seemed to be limited to cider, cyder, cidre, lager, laager, laguer and amber nectar. No, not even Newcastle Brown!... I settled for a bottle of Tiger, which can be quite nice if NOT served at below - 200 deg Kelvin, which this seemed to be – as a lover of warm beer [after all this is England, home of the same]. I was not here to get pissed, drink alcohol whatever the circumstances etc – I just wanted to wet my whistle before, during and after being entertained at a rather good concert.• I took one swig from the beer and my throat was immediately anaesthetised if not destroyed by near-absolute zero liquid nitrogen, so I surgically removed the bottle from my lips and asked the barmaid if I could have a [non-alcoholic] ginger beer [having spied some on the cold shelf as opposed to in the freezer and how much it would cost [bearing in mind that I’d already shelled out for a round of drinks where no-one had got what they’d originally asked for]… “90pence for half a can,” came the reply. You could have knocked me down with a feather – not only by the price, but also by the idea that one might get sold half a can [what would happen to the other half, would it be flat before another mug came along for it?, would it have to be chucked away at the end of the evening?, was such an arrangement acceptable under weights and measures, hygiene, health and safety etc legislation?] My reaction was not to ask these entirely reasonable questions but to blurt out, ‘£1.80 for a can of fizzy pop you could buy for 30pence in a shop?’ The reply floored me. This IS central Brighton, don’t you know?’ – not even sympathetic with my objection. In fact – to put it bluntly – fucking rude!• I then turned to the callow youth masquerading as ‘Mein Host’: ‘Could I have a cup of tea please?’ I enquired, trying to remain calm, although by now quite distressed. ‘No hot drinks available in the evening.’ [Not even ‘sorry’ or ‘sir’].I gave up, left my almost unstarted bottle of Tiger on the counter [wondering if they’d manage to resell it] and went over to Morrisons Supermarket and bought a yogurt drink and the largest bar of cheap white chocolate I could lay hands on to settle my jangled nerves and recently acquired despair in at least a particular sector of human kind.It might be unfair to judge the quality of an olde englishe pubbe – on the strength of two visits to the place – but I’m sure greater judgements have been passed on lesser evidence. I certainly will arm myself with suitable sustenance next time I attend an entertainment at ‘Upstairs at Three and Ten’ whilst giving the incompetent gang of crooks downstairs a very wide birth.

Some of the conversational exchanges in this article may have been edited and rebuilt for ‘comic/tragic’ effect – but there again, they may not.

This really tasty piece of art/music will no doubt be hijacked by those wimpy people who insist on labelling anything a wee bit left-field with the meaningless epithet "Post-Punk".

I think I'll have to bag it up in the equally vast but more meaningful wasteland called Fusion. To narrow things down a bit I think I shall helpfully and more precisely define it to be "Dark Fusion."

It encompasses all sorts of genres that have passed this way before - notably Stranglers/Roxy Music-type Glam/Rock/Punk, some exceedingly good Industrial Electronica a la Einstürzende Neubauten or Faust, a dash of Pomp and a gert-big dollop of good old-fashoined straight-down-the-line Rock'n'Roll!

More immediately and importantly Give Her The Gun is the direct descendent of the recently extinct and lamented cock-rockers(?) LeftHand Red.

In other words, it really is a unique stand-alone creation worthy of consideration of all music-lovers and heading I anticipate for the stately destination of 'Masterpiece' for The Few ie You and Me [The Cogniscenti] - a bold claim I accept but I'm sure there are Others out there who will join me in acclaiming this work to be just that!

I cannot describe how satisfying and challenging I've found listening to and exploring this mini-album to be. "The Creators" [I think I'll call them that] proclaim Give Her The Gun to be 'a fictional band set in a post-apocalyptic time' and the world they inhabit to be 'connected to the band-penned novels 'Caden's Journals' '[if you can sort out my liberally-sprinkled apostrophes!] - a new chapter of which will be released every few weeks and it is intended to publish a complete new novel every 18-24 months.

And as with all their other activities, including their 1st album which is due in 2013, the novel will be released under the auspices of the mysteriously titled production company "Arcane Alliance".

I thoroughly recommend this very imaginative meandering 6-track EP and suggest you make every effort to support this ambitious and very worthwhile project.

Do you remember these 2 villains. They're called Raymond Baxter [left] and James Burke. From 1965, in a TV programme called 'Tomorrow's World,' they bombarded us with futuristic designs, ideas and inventions which would free us from wage slavery and bring increasing leisure to all our lives. We could expect a future of prosperity, idleness and pleasure.

Well, many of us have the idleness although not in the way we were led to expect. Others do in fact have the pleasure and prosperity - but number only a measly 2-3% of our population. Many of us are being forced to spend the evenings of our lives as drudges or searching for jobs that do not exist.

These men stand accused of selling us similar dreams to those peddled by the likes of Mao, Stalin and Hitler.

They have betrayed generations. They should be rounded up tried for treachery of the highest order.

I had hoped to go on The Zombie Walk in Brighton on Saturday, but my new relationship with BREMF - the Brighton Early Music Festival - made my participation impossible as I was committed throughout the day.

However around lunchtime I was stabbed with a few pangs of regret as I saw numerous Zomboids heading for The Town dolled up to the gills in blood and gore and sporting their best ripped bedlinen, excitedly anticipating the day's events. Momentarily I wished I could have been amongst them, doing the Shuffle of the Undead.

Later in the evening I didn't feel so sad when I saw any number of Doubly Zombified wrecks stumbling homeward doubt feeling the effects of several hours of Undyingly Bad Behaviour.

I've been off track for some considerable time now. Some of you will know that my little brother took his life getting on for a couple of years ago. On top of this my mother, who was destitute in Spain suffering from dementia lived out her life in a spanish Care Home and eventually passed on last December. My more immediate nuclear family has been dogged with illness - my daughter has ME and Fibromyalgaea while my partner has a chronic form of leukaemia. All this has added up to me not coping so well. I certainly have neglected my blogging and record reviewing.

After 8 months grief counselling with a Jane, a lovely lady from Cruse, and some therapeutic art at a mental health drop in unit in brighton, I am feeling like I want to get back to writing etc. So her I am.

I''ll start gently by just showing you a few of my drawings. I've found the process intriguing - although I have occasionally drawn before, I have never really quite found it so absorbing and comforting. Please let me know if you like it.

The materials used are pencil crayons and wax crayons - I especially like the chunky varieties that are sold for toddlers to use with their pudgy little hands. They seem to suit my clumsy style!

There are plenty more where these came from. If anyone likes them enough to comment favourably, I'll put up a few more. Thanks for visitng and come back soon.

I’m glad to see the local council have at last seen some sort of sense and brought their services to places where their potential clients are eking out their miserable existences instead of sitting in ivory towers waiting for the sick and needy to come to them.

I have experienced this imaginative new service in the form of Social Work being delivered to the Komedia in Brighton by the very proficient team styling themselves Bourgeois and Maurice. I believe them to be close associates of that other wonderful team of public benefactors Wallace and Gromit.

Together with a couple of hundred fellow sufferers these two experts took me through all the dubious behavioural deviancies that befall us as we stumble through the confusing midden that is everyday life in an effort to liberate us from the procrastinations we endure whilst trying to see out through the miasmic fog of our own psyches.

They achieved this through the very useful tho’ oft-neglected media of song, dance, dramatic re-enactment and the presentation of photographic evidence and the display of video footage, illustrating the manifold errors in our dealings with this hazardous world.

Mr Bourgeois, his startling appearance akin to those dangerous exemplars Frank N Furter and The Thin White Duke, took the role of main protagonist and role model of how not the disport oneself in public places. Meanwhile, his companion Ms Maurice, complete with beehive a la Mari Wilson et al, provided suitable background material in the form of musical accompaniment, clarifying remarks and other back-ups rather in the form of the more familiar Powerpoint Presentation.

All these was done with consummate ease and the clients all left feeling somewhat relieved of their burdens, quite refreshed, but looking forward to their next round of therapeutic input.

There is one danger I would warn against, however. This and similar fashionable styles of treatment should be used on the unsuspecting public sparingly and only in otherwise hopeless cases for the time being; at least until there is sufficient evidence of their efficacy and stringent safety parameters have been established. These limits should be kept under constant peer review through scrutiny via the usual channels and respectable journals such as Nature, Social Work Today and The Beano.